Our world culture is founded on the assumption that the Big Bang gave rise to matter, which in time evolved into the world, into which the body was born, inside which a brain appeared, out of which awareness at some late stage developed. None of this could ever be verified, because it is not possible to legitimately assert the existence of anything prior to awareness or consciousness. Therefore, any honest model of reality must start with awareness. To start anywhere else is to build a model on the shifting sands of belief.
It is commonly believed that awareness is a property of the body, and as a result we feel that it is ‘I, this body’ that knows or is aware of the world. That is, we believe and feel that the knowing with which we are aware of our experience is located in and shares the limits and destiny of the body. This is the fundamental assumption of self and other, mind and matter, subject and object that underpins almost all our thoughts and feelings, and is subsequently expressed in our activities and relationships.
However, it is not ‘I, the body’ that is aware; it is ‘I, awareness’ that is aware. A body doesn’t have awareness; awareness ‘has’ the experience of a body. The body, as it is actually experienced, is a series of sensations and perceptions in the finite mind, and the only substance present in mind is pure knowing or awareness. It is thought alone that conceptualises and, as such, abstracts the body as an object made of matter appearing outside awareness. However, if we stay strictly with the evidence of experience, the body is an appearance in awareness; awareness is not an appearance in the body.
An inevitable corollary to the belief that awareness is a by-product of the body is the belief that awareness is intermittent, that it appears and disappears, that it starts at one time and ends at another. However, to assert the absence of awareness as an actual experience, something would have to be aware of that experience, and that very ‘something’ would be awareness itself. Therefore, such a claim confirms the presence of awareness rather than its absence. It is our experience that we are continuously aware.
When I say that we are continuously aware, one might legitimately ask who is the ‘we’ that is being referred to. Who is the ‘we’ that is aware that we are continuously aware? Who or what has the experience of being aware? Who or what knows that there is awareness? Awareness is the aware or knowing element in all experience and is, therefore, the only ‘one’ present to know whatever is known or experienced, including its own presence.
Therefore, the experience of being aware, or the knowledge ‘I am’, ‘I am aware’ or ‘There is awareness’ is awareness’s knowledge of itself. Only awareness knows that there is awareness. Only awareness is aware. As such, awareness is self-aware. Just as all objects on earth are illuminated by the sun but the sun alone is self-luminous, so all experience is known by awareness, but awareness itself is self-knowing. Thus, it is awareness’s experience that it is continuously or, more accurately, eternally aware.
Being aware is awareness’s primary experience. Awareness knows its own being before it knows any other thing. Thus, awareness’s knowing of its being is the original knowledge, the primary, fundamental and subjective knowledge upon which all objective knowledge is based. It is the ground from which all experience rises and upon which it rests, just as the colourless screen is the foundation upon which all images play.
Awareness’s knowing of its being is also its ultimate or final knowledge, that is, the knowledge that remains over after every thought, feeling, sensation and perception has vanished, just as the screen remains over after a movie ends. It is to this understanding that Jesus refers in the Book of Revelation when he says, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.’ It is also the knowledge to which the term Vedanta, meaning the ‘end of knowledge’, refers.
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Because we normally believe that it is ‘I, the body’ that is aware or has awareness, the body and, by extension, the world are considered to precede awareness. Thus, awareness is considered to be derived from the body, as an epiphenomenon of the brain. However, in order to legitimately claim this, we would have to experience the body prior to the experience of being aware, and then notice the experience of being aware arising in the body. Nobody has ever had, or could ever have, this experience. If we maintain the honesty and rigor of the scientist, who is willing to state only the facts of experience without any regard for their implications or consequences, we must acknowledge that awareness is the primary element in all experience.
Being aware or awareness itself is not a property of a person, self or body. All that is known of a body is a flow of continuously changing sensations and perceptions. All sensations and perceptions appear in mind, and the only substance present in mind is awareness or consciousness itself. Thus, the body is an appearance in mind, and the ultimate reality of mind, and therefore the body, is awareness.
The essential nature of awareness is to be aware, just as it is the nature of the sun to shine. Simply by being itself, awareness is aware of itself, just as the sun illuminates itself simply by being itself. Awareness cannot cease being aware, for being aware is its nature. If it ceased being aware, it would cease being awareness. Where would awareness go if it were to cease and therefore disappear? There is nothing in our experience – that is, there is nothing in awareness’s experience – that is prior to or ‘further back’ than awareness itself, into which awareness could disappear.
It is thought that mistakenly identifies awareness with the limits and destiny of the body and thus believes that awareness is intermittent. However, in awareness’s own experience of itself – and awareness is the only ‘one’ that is in a position to know anything about itself – it is eternal, or ever-present.
Although awareness is eternally aware of itself, it is not always aware of the body. The body is an appearance in and of the finite mind, and the finite mind is itself a modulation of awareness. Thus, the body is a temporary modulation of and an appearance in awareness; awareness is not an appearance in the body. Awareness itself is not intermittent. It is a continuous, or, more accurately, ever-present, non-objective experience.
How could something that is ever-present be a by-product of something that is intermittent? To believe that awareness is a by-product of the body is like believing that a screen is produced by the movie that appears on it. The screen is continuous; the movie comes and goes. The movie is a by-product of the screen. Awareness is like a self-aware screen: in its own experience of itself it is continuous or ever-present.
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Awareness vibrates within itself and assumes the form of the finite mind. The finite mind is therefore not an entity in its own right; it is the activity of awareness. There are no real objects, entities or selves, each with its own separate identity, appearing in awareness, just as there are no real characters in a movie. There is only awareness and its activity, just as there is only the screen and its modulation.
Awareness assumes the form of the finite mind by identifying itself with the body, through the agency of which it knows the world, in the same way that at night our own mind collapses into the mind of the dreamed character from whose point of view the dreamed world is known. Just as the activity of our individual mind appears to itself in the form of the dreamed world, so awareness appears to itself as the world in the form of the activity of each of our minds. It is only from the point of view of the apparent awareness-in-the-body entity – the finite mind – that awareness now seems to be limited and temporary, and that the body and world seem to have their own independent status as objects.
Awareness assumes the form of the finite mind in order to simultaneously create and know the world, but it doesn’t need to assume the form of mind in order to know itself. Awareness is made of pure knowing or being aware, and therefore knows itself simply by being itself. Awareness doesn’t need to reflect its knowing off an object in order to know itself, just as the sun doesn’t need to reflect its light off the moon in order to illuminate itself.
A child sometimes takes a mirror and catches the light of the sun with it, reflecting the sun’s light into a friend’s eyes. To believe that awareness needs a finite mind to know itself is like believing that the sun illuminates itself by reflecting its light off a little piece of mirror. The sun doesn’t need a mirror to illuminate itself; it illuminates itself by itself. Likewise, awareness doesn’t need to shine in or on an object, such as a mind or a body, to know itself through the reflected light of that object. The only substance that is present in awareness is being aware, aware being or pure knowing. Therefore, the knowing of itself is what it is, not what it does.
In order to illuminate an object, the sun must direct its rays away from itself, towards that object, but in order to illuminate itself the sun doesn’t have to direct its rays anywhere. Likewise, to know an object, other or world, awareness has to rise in the form of mind, which it does by locating itself in a body, from whose point of view it can now direct the light of its knowing towards that object. But in order to know itself it doesn’t need to direct its knowing in any particular direction. It doesn’t have to go anywhere or do anything. For awareness, being itself is knowing itself, just as for the sun, being itself is illuminating itself.
All objects and selves are known by awareness, but awareness is known by itself alone. Thus, all objects and selves depend upon and are relative to awareness, but awareness is relative to nothing. All knowledge is relative except awareness’s knowing of its own being. Awareness’s knowledge of itself is thus absolute. In fact, awareness’s knowledge of itself is the only absolute knowledge there is, and is as such the foundation and fountain of all relative knowledge.
Just as the sun is too close to itself to turn round and illuminate itself in subject–object relationship, so awareness is too close to itself to stand apart from itself as a separate subject of experience and know itself as an object. Thus, awareness’s knowledge of its own being is utterly unique. It is a category of knowledge that transcends all other knowledge and experience. It is sacred knowledge. It is absolute. It remains the same at all times, in all places, and under all conditions and circumstances. It is the only certainty, from which all other knowledge borrows its relative certainty.
Awareness’s knowing of its own being is imperturbable, indestructible, inextinguishable, indivisible, immutable, immortal, invulnerable. It cannot be touched, but all knowledge and experienced is touched by it. It is the only knowledge that does not require the division of experience into an apparent duality of subject and object, and so it is said to be non-dual knowledge.
The self that knows is the self that is known, just as the sun that illuminates is the sun that is illuminated. All other knowledge and experience requires the division of experience into an apparent subject from whose perspective an object, other or world may be known. In relation to all objects, awareness can be said to be the ultimate subject of experience, but its knowing of its own being transcends the duality of subject and object.
The belief that awareness needs a mind in order to know itself is a common misunderstanding in the field known as Consciousness Studies, where the disciplines of non-duality and science meet, and particularly in contemporary expressions of the non-dual understanding. Awareness need only assume the form of an apparently separate subject of experience, the finite mind, in order to know a separate object, other or world. To know itself it need not assume the form of a separate subject, nor can it know itself as an object.
For awareness, there is no distance between itself and the knowing of itself. It is simultaneously the subject and the object of its own experience. The essential, irreducible nature of awareness is to be and know itself alone. The knowing of its own objectless being is awareness’s primary experience. Just by being itself, it knows itself. Awareness is the knowing element in all that is known or experienced and is, therefore, the only ‘one’ present to know or experience anything, including itself. The ordinary, intimate and familiar experience of simply being aware is awareness’s awareness of itself.
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The mind can never know or find awareness, although everything that it knows or finds is made of awareness alone, just as a character in a movie can never know or find the screen although everything that she knows or finds is made only of the screen. The mind that seeks to know or find awareness is like a character in a movie that travels the world in search of the screen. It like a current in the ocean in search of water. The mind is made out of the very stuff for which it is in search, but it can never find that stuff on its own terms, that is, as an objective experience in time and space.
Imagine physical space prior to the appearance of any object within it, just a vast, borderless space. Now imagine adding to this space the quality of being aware or knowing. The space is now a vast aware or knowing field, without borders and empty of objects. If we were now to remove the space-like quality from this aware or knowing field, we would end up with pure, dimensionless knowing or being aware, that is, we would end up with awareness or consciousness itself.
In fact, it is not possible to imagine something that has no dimensions. Indeed, something that has no dimensions is not a thing. Whatever we can think of must have objective qualities and therefore a dimension in time or space. Awareness itself has no dimensions and is thus not a thing or object of any kind, and yet the experience of awareness or being aware is an undeniable, albeit non-objective experience. However, this does not invalidate the attempt to think of awareness. In trying to imagine the very awareness out of which it is made, the mind will bring itself to its own end, and as a result, objectless awareness will shine as it is.
There is actually no such experience as the ending of mind. Indeed, there is no such thing as the mind or a mind. The only entity present in mind, if it can be called an entity, is awareness or consciousness itself, and awareness or consciousness never ends, nor indeed starts. Mind only believes that awareness starts and ends because it identifies awareness with the limited and temporary body. However, in awareness’s own experience of itself – and awareness is the only one that knows anything about awareness – awareness is ever-present.
Mind is the activity of awareness. Therefore, in the same way that the screen doesn’t come to an end when a movie ends but simply loses its temporary colouring, so awareness doesn’t end when the mind stops, but simply ceases colouring itself in the form of mind’s activity.
Mind is a self-colouring of awareness, just as a movie is a self-colouring of the screen. In the attempt to know the awareness out of which it is made, the mind simply loses its colour and stands revealed as pure, dimensionless, colourless awareness – pure in the sense that it is not mixed with anything other than itself, and dimensionless in that it has no objective qualities extended in time or space. This zero-dimensional awareness is not an abstraction of thought to which no one has access or knowledge. It is the very awareness with which each of us is currently knowing our experience.
In fact, it is not the awareness with which we are knowing our experience. This non-dimensional awareness is not a quality of our self, nor does it belong to our self. It is our self – and not even our self. It is the self, if it can be called a self. There is no ‘me’ or ‘us’ to whom awareness belongs. It belongs to itself.
We do not have awareness; we are awareness. Awareness is not an attribute of the body, just as the screen is not a property of a character in a movie. Nor is awareness in the body; rather, it is ‘in itself’. Just as the screen does not appear in the space and time that exist for the character in a movie, so awareness does not appear in the space and time that seem to exist for the finite mind.
As a concession to the mind that wants to think about the nature of awareness, it is legitimate and even necessary to add a subtle space-like quality to it to give it apparently objective and thus conceivable, describable qualities. So, to accommodate our desire to think and speak of awareness, let us conceive of it as a vast, borderless, empty, self-aware space, a field or medium whose nature is simply knowing or being aware. In time, thinking about awareness gives way to the contemplation of awareness – its contemplation of itself – of which more will be said in subsequent chapters.
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Everything appears to mind in accordance with its understanding of itself. ‘As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.’* It is for this reason that science cannot tell us anything about the nature of awareness. What passes for the increasingly popular field of Consciousness Studies is, in almost all cases, a study of brain activity, not a study of consciousness. Only consciousness knows about consciousness. Only awareness is aware of awareness. Science is an activity of the finite mind, that is, an activity of thought and perception, and necessarily superimposes the limitations of mind upon everything it knows or perceives.
Everything that is known by the mind is an expression and reflection of its own limitations. Being temporary and finite itself, the mind believes awareness to be likewise. Most minds, through which objective reality is known, forget their own limitations and project them instead onto whatever they know or perceive. Thus, everything experienced by the mind appears to be temporary in time and/or finite in space. Forgetting that it has projected its own limitations on reality, the mind believes that the time and space it seems to experience are innate qualities of objective reality itself, whereas in fact they are simply reflections of its own limitations.
Time and space are, in fact, dimensionless awareness refracted through the prism of the finite mind, that is, refracted through thought and perception. They are the filters through which awareness perceives its own reality in the form of the world. If reality is refracted through the mind of a flea, it will appear in accordance with the limitations of a flea’s mind; if through the mind of a dog, in accordance with the limitations of a dog’s mind; and if through the mind of a human being, in accordance with the limitations of a human mind.
However, mind is not something separate from reality. It is reality itself – awareness itself – which assumes the forms of each of these minds and through their agency is able to know or perceive a segment of its own infinite potential in the form of the world. In other words, the illusion of a multiplicity and diversity of objects known by a separate subject remains; ignorance of its reality goes. As the eighth-century Zen master Huang Po said, ‘People neglect the reality of the illusory world.’
Even when the essential nature of mind has been recognised, reality will still appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves, in accordance with the limitations of the mind through which it is known. However, this appearance will be informed by the understanding that the apparent multiplicity and diversity of reality is not a quality of reality itself, but of the mind through which and as which it is perceived. It will be recognised that the reality that underlies the appearance of multiplicity and diversity is itself an infinite, indivisible whole, and this understanding will inform all the subsequent activities of such a mind.
The mind cannot know the nature of reality until it knows its own nature, thus the science of mind is the highest science. By ‘science of mind’, I do not mean the study of the content of mind; I mean the knowledge of the essential nature of mind. The essential nature of mind is that element of mind which remains continuously present throughout all its changing knowledge and experience. It is that element of mind that cannot be removed from it. It is original, unconditioned mind, pure knowing, awareness or consciousness itself. Thus, the ultimate science is the science of consciousness.
However, the science of consciousness is a unique science, because it is the only branch of knowledge that does not require consciousness to rise in the form of the finite mind and, as such, direct itself towards objective knowledge or experience. The science of consciousness is entirely between consciousness and itself. It is about awareness’s knowledge of its own being.
Awareness’s knowledge of itself is the only absolute knowledge. It is sacred knowledge; in religious language it is God’s knowledge of Himself.* It is the highest understanding, upon which all subsequent knowledge must depend.
* William Blake, letter to the Reverend John Trusler (1799).
* Referring to God as ‘Him’ is used simply as a convention and has no other significance.